Education Spending

PISA, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.

The performance of American 15-year-olds in reading and math has remained stagnant for the past two decades according to results released this past week from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Meanwhile, the achievement gap in reading between high- and low-performing students has grown wider.

Chile is the country most closely resembling the math and reading scores of American black students; Turkey most closely matches the combined achievement of American Hispanic students. Yet the United States spends more than twice as much per pupil as either Chile or Turkey.

Even the scores for American white students, while internationally competitive, appear less than impressive.

Estonia scores a bit higher while spending half as much per pupil as the United States. Moreover, scholars have made us aware that higher-income American families spend lavishly on enrichment options for their K-12 students (tutoring, club sports, etc.), and that this spending has increased steadily over time.

And, while enrichment spending apparently has little to do with improvement among low-income students (the trend in such spending is flat since the early 1980s), that isn’t the case among advantaged students. Richer in schools twice as well funded but underperforming is not a great place for America’s highest-performing subgroup to find itself vis-à-vis Estonia.

Even without these latest PISA results, but reinforced in light of them, it’s clear that without the benefit of lavish enrichment spending and other related advantages, the high levels of spending in American schools appears broadly ineffectual for students of color.

If you know your United States history, you know that the Pilgrims came to North America seeking to practice their religion free from the constraints of the Church of England. If you know your U.S. history well, you know that what many call the beginning of public schooling was the Massachusetts Bay colony’s law of 1647 requiring towns to supply some form of education, lest children fall victim to “that old deluder, Satan.” And if you know your history really well, you know that as public schooling developed it was repeatedly beset by religious conflicts, first as the schools were de facto Protestant, then as they became de facto agnostic.

What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? That we may be on the verge of tearing down barriers to people directing education funds to schools sharing their religious values, barriers that do not just hurt religious families, but by forcing all to support one system of schools also keep non-religious families from getting what they want. Where religious people are sufficiently numerous, they can sometimes create de factoreligious public schools, and where they are not sufficiently numerous to exert outright control educators will often avoid things that upset them.

The barriers I’m speaking of are Blaine Amendments, named after 19th century U.S. Senator James G. Blaine but found in 37 state constitutions. They are being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The case involves a scholarship tax credit program that was struck down by Montana’s supreme court because it would have allowed scholarships to be used at religious schools. Oral arguments are scheduled for January 22, 2020.

These amendments, originally created to keep money in de facto Protestant public schools and out of Catholic institutions, are often interpreted to mean that no government money may go to religious schools even if directed by the free choice of parents. Basically—and as these Cato amicus briefs lay out in greater depth—they force religious people to pay for government schools that legally cannot teach religious beliefs as true, or make policies based on religious convictions. Indeed, the schools often teach things and institute policies that contradict people’s religious beliefs. That violates religious freedom and renders religious people unequal under the law.

The prospects for these amendments being struck down, or at least sufficiently curbed that people can get tax credits for funding religious school scholarships, are good. From Zelman v. Simmons Harris, in which the U.S. Supreme Court established that parents can take state vouchers to religious schools without violating the U.S. Constitution, to the Trinity Lutheran decision that states cannot bar institutions from participating in funding programs simply because they are religious, precedent is on freedom’s side.

For this we should all be thankful. Because more freedom is what America is supposed to be about.

A new report by Charles Barone and Nicholas Munyan-Penney for Ed Reform Now, a nonprofit particularly focused on the content of student learning in public schools, has found that Florida’s system of K-12 funding broadly delivers a greater level of total subsidy to the schools of low-income students.

From the report:

In the vast majority of the largest districts in Florida, high-poverty schools have a distinct advantage over low-poverty schools, ranging from a 9.7 percent advantage ($9,000 to $8,200) in Duval County to an incredible 70.6 percent advantage ($13,900 to $8,100) in Palm Beach County …

When considering race/ethnicity, in all 10 of Florida’s largest districts, schools with the highest concentrations of nonwhite students have a significant advantage over schools with lower concentrations of nonwhite students.

Statewide, high-poverty schools receive $9,000 per student, which is greater than the statewide average of $8,200 per pupil for low-poverty schools. This is worth noting as a significant achievement. Heavy reliance upon local property taxes creates large funding inequities favoring high-wealth districts absent state equalization efforts. In the worst cases, wealthy areas both spend far more per pupil and enjoy lower tax rates than poor districts. An $800 per-pupil advantage for high poverty districts took no small amount of effort to create.

Florida does, however, have a large group of high-poverty students receiving considerably less than either high-poverty or even low poverty schools – the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. This year, 101,862 scholarship students have an average household income of $27,188, or about 13 percent above the poverty level. Sixty eight percent are black or Hispanic and 57 percent are in single-parent households.

In 2019-20, scholarship recipients will not receive either the average of $8,200 received by low-poverty districts nor the $9,000 statewide average for students in high-poverty districts. For 2019-20, scholarships will average between $6,775 and $7,250.

Hopefully, Florida policymakers will not only equalize funding but also liberalize allowable uses. Families should have the option to spend their funds on school tuition, but also on tutors, therapists and enrichment. Families should not only have the power to choose, they should also have the opportunity to maximize the value of their funds given the particular needs and aspirations of the student. Equity and efficiency need not be at odds, but instead could proceed hand-in-hand toward a brighter future.

Editor’s note: Today, we offer Part 2 of a two-part post from redefinED executive editor Matt Ladner. You can read Part 1 here. Ladner’s commentary ends our series commemorating the 20th anniversary of the K-12 reforms launched by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, collectively known as the A+ accountability plan.

One challenge to several of the A+ reforms is that they lack a natural constituency, which makes them politically vulnerable. The photo above is a good example of a natural constituency.

Not all policies, even worthy ones, necessarily animate people to appear at a state capitol in vast throngs. Bill de Blasio’s new administration, for instance, cast productive school grading and third-grade literacy policies aside without breaking a sweat and (lamentably) nary a murmur of protest. You can see what resulted when the mayor (who by his own confession “hates” charter schools) took them on here.

The most basic rule of politics is that organized beats unorganized every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Sadly, the folks who oppose most K-12 solutions – other than “hurl more money at the system and hope for the best” – have a high degree of political organization and engagement. They tend to have sympathetic allies working in bureaucratic agencies and commissions.

State law can attempt to compel them to do things but has a hard time compelling them to do something effectively. The families who have benefitted from state literacy policies or school grades largely are unaware of that fact, and thus do not constitute an effective constituency to defend or extend such policies.

The Florida Reading Scholarship, a recent program providing families with struggling readers funds to purchase services for them, might suggest a way forward. This program is relatively new and provides only a small subsidy — $500 — to students with a large problem (poor literacy skills). A primitive prototype version of this policy failed in an entirely predictable fashion when the No Child Left Behind Act funded the program through district budgets and left them in charge of program administration. You don’t need a Ph.D. in game theory to guess how that worked out.

Upper income families have engaged in multi-vendor education out of their own pocketbooks with a growing frequency (see trend on the far right, below). This also seems to be working out relatively well on the outcomes side of things (see two charts on the left).

A $500-per-year scholarship for struggling readers is only a small step in attempts to address the glaring equity issue in the chart above. But the first step is the most important step, and once again, Florida is taking that first step.

Right about now, we don’t even know how much of the differences seen in education outcomes are the result of school effectiveness, or lack thereof, and how much is due to what we see going on in the right side of the chart. Put me down for some of both, but hopefully future research will give guidance.

If you lived in normal times, you might think about working out the kinks to the Florida Reading Scholarship and going big with it if the results seemed promising. Just as a reminder however, the budget math looks unforgiving:

Don’t feel overly daunted. Florida’s A+ plan increased the productivity of K-12 spending in a variety of ways after all. The young Florida adults in the early stages of their careers were far better educated than older generations. Florida’s public pensions are in relatively good shape. If you were, say, New York, none of this would be true, and you would have been spending approximately twice as much on per-pupil K-12 results and would not have gotten results as good as the ones you actually achieved.

So you need only increase the productivity of public spending in a politically sustainable fashion while the country struggles to cope with large imbalances in entitlement programs. Your ancestors had to stare down nuclear annihilation after defeating global fascism, which came right after the biggest global economic depression in human history.

TALLAHASSEE — Rejecting arguments of numerous school boards across the state, an appeals court Thursday upheld the constitutionality of a controversial 2017 law that sought to bolster charter schools.

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal backed a decision by a Leon County circuit judge, who turned down arguments that the mammoth education law improperly infringed on the rights of school boards to operate their districts.

The law, known in education circles by the shorthand HB 7069, was a priority of then-House Speaker Richard Corcoran, a Land O’ Lakes Republican who now serves as state education commissioner. Corcoran and other school-choice supporters used the measure to try to direct additional money to charter schools and to authorize “schools of hope,” a new type of charter school aimed at areas where children have been served by low-performing traditional public schools.

School boards challenged the constitutionality of the law in two lawsuits, which were consolidated into one case. They argued the law gave too much power to the state and violated part of the Florida Constitution about local operation of schools.

But Thursday’s 22-page ruling said school boards did not have legal standing to challenge some parts of the law, including the part establishing schools of hope. It cited court precedents and a legal doctrine that effectively limits the ability of public officials to challenge the constitutionality of state laws.

“The school boards’ constitutional challenge to HB 7069’s provisions represents their disagreement with new statutory duties enacted by the Legislature,” said the ruling, written by Judge Joseph Lewis and joined by judges Timothy Osterhaus and M. Kemmerly Thomas. “As the foregoing authority makes clear, however, the school boards must presume that the provisions at issue are constitutional.”

The ruling said the school boards had legal standing to challenge two parts of the law — but it rejected the boards’ claims that those parts were unconstitutional.

Those issues dealt with a move by the Legislature to provide more building funds and federal Title I money to charter schools. The building funds involved money raised through local property taxes for capital-improvement projects, while the Title I program provides money to schools that serve large numbers of low-income students.

In a brief filed last year, attorneys for 10 school boards said the parts of the law dealing with building funds and Title I money “remove significant spending decisions from local school boards.”

“A school board that cannot determine how to best spend its tax revenues no longer has the power to operate, control, and supervise its schools,” said the brief, filed on behalf of the school boards in Alachua, Bay, Broward, Hamilton, Lee, Orange, Pinellas, Polk, St. Lucie and Volusia counties.

But the appeals court, in upholding last year’s decision by Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper, pointed, in part, to a constitutional requirement that the state make “adequate provision” for public schools. Charter schools are public schools, though they are typically run by private operators.

“While charter schools are statutorily considered to be public schools, the reality is that they do compete with the traditional public schools in their districts. … Given such, the state’s constitutional duty to make adequate provision for Florida’s public schools must be interpreted to mean that the state has a duty to ensure that charter schools are not neglected by the school boards,” Lewis wrote in part of the ruling dealing with the building funds. “By requiring that charter schools receive a certain portion of capital millage funds, the state is not violating” the Constitution and is carrying out the purpose of the adequate-provision requirement.

Similarly, the appeals court pointed to the adequate-provision issue in upholding the part of the law dealing with Title I money.

“The school boards contend that prior to the enactment of HB 7069, they could use a portion of the Title I funds to fund district-wide programs, such as summer school, after-hours programs, district-wide science and technology initiatives, or a transportation system to ensure that low-income students could take advantage of the programs,” the ruling said. “They claim that the foregoing provision (in the law) unconstitutionally divested them of their right to decide how to spend federal Title I funds. In rejecting this claim, the trial court correctly recognized that the school boards do not have any constitutional right to federal Title I funds. Moreover, as is the case with capital millage, we find that the Title I issue is governed by the state’s constitutional authority … to ensure the adequate provision of education for all children in Florida. Ensuring that students in charter schools receive the federal funds that they are entitled to without relying upon the school boards’ discretion on how to allocate those funds does not violate Florida’s Constitution.”

The 10 school boards were plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits, while the Collier County School Board filed the other.

Education Next recently released its annual poll full of interesting information, including this graphic that shows Americans consistently underestimate the amount of money spent on public education in their state.

The upshot

The public is providing almost twice as much money per pupil as the average respondent estimates.

Why this is important

Results like these don’t mean we should spend less on public education. In fact, there are plenty of people who, when confronted with actual spending information, still want to spend more on K-12 education.

The results, should, however, compel us to take a moment to sympathize with the plight of the state lawmaker.

States don’t have a money printing press and generally deal with state constitutions that require expenditures to match revenues. The demand for expenditures always exceeds the supply of revenues, and the public’s demands are not, alas, consistently well informed.

Interestingly, the low-ball estimates for public school spending would be far more accurate if they were a guess as to state per-pupil spending on charter school students. These estimates would be higher than the average per-pupil funding received by students in private choice programs.

Where we should go from here

Pollsters frequently will produce polls that find “X percent of the public support increased funding for Y policy priority.” That’s all well and good, but if you are a lawmaker charged with the responsibility of passing a budget, you have no choice but to establish relative priorities – health care vs. higher education vs. transportation vs. K-12 education – and lots of other things within the context of available revenue.

So, the next time you talk to a state lawmaker, try thanking him or her for doing a difficult job before you complain about how he or she is doing it.

The Urban Institute has released a study of long-term outcomes associated with private choice program participation in Florida, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., tracking college attendance and college completion rates for choice participants for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program.

Digging deeper: The results show clear advantages for choice students in Florida. Fifty-seven percent of Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students who started the program between third and seventh grades enrolled in college compared with 51 percent of matched non-Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students. Additionally, Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students had higher college-going rates in all sectors and were more likely to attend college full time. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program’s impact on both enrollment and degree attainment grew with the number of years of program participation.

A similar pattern emerges in the data for students starting in the program between eighth and 10th grades. Sixty-four percent of Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students attended a college within two years of their expected graduation rate, while the rate for the comparison group was 54 percent.

The study found positive results among scholarship program students in Wisconsin and neutral findings in Washington, D.C.

The big picture: The Urban Institute study results show better long-term student outcomes at a lower per-pupil cost in Florida and Wisconsin and equivalent long-term outcomes at a much lower per-pupil cost in Washington, D.C.

·The average Florida Tax Credit Scholarship amounts to 69 percent of the state’s average total per-pupil spending in the public school system.

·In Wisconsin, the MPCP average scholarship amounted to 67 percent of the average district per-pupil spending.

·In Washington, D.C., the average Opportunity Scholarship amounted to only 46 percent of the average per-pupil spending in District of Columbia Public Schools.

In Florida, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, the Urban Institute analysis finds, respectively, better, better, and the same long-term outcomes.

The takeaway: Imagine the possibilities if the students in these programs received equal funding and enjoyed the flexibility of spending funds on enrichment activities such as tutoring and summer camps in addition to private school tuition.

Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education on Wednesday released a 93-page report of the Providence, Rhode Island, Public School District that provides a useful cautionary tale on how not to structure a K-12 system, reminding us that big spending and strong unions fail to produce learning for kids.

Among the report’s highlights:

·The great majority of students are not learning on, or even near, grade level.

·With rare exception, teachers are demoralized and feel unsupported.

·Most parents feel shut out of their children’s education.

·Principals find it very difficult to demonstrate leadership.

·Many school buildings are deteriorating across the city, and some are even dangerous to students’ and teachers’ wellbeing.

You can view local television coverage of the “devastating” report here and here.

Meanwhile, the Digest of Education Statistics shows that Rhode Island spent a total of $16,496 per pupil in the 2014-15 school year compared to Florida’s per-pupil expenditure of $9,962.

The John Hopkins researchers visited multiple Providence classrooms and found reading classes where no one was reading and French classes where no one was speaking French. They did, however, observe kindergarten students punching each other in the face, students staring at their phones during class, and students communicating over Facetime during class. One can only shudder to think what might be going on when university researchers aren’t touring the school.

Twenty-five kids in a Providence classroom will generate a bit over $400,000 in revenue. That money gets spent on something, but alas, there isn’t much learning happening.

Now at this point in the conversation, some of our friends with reactionary traditionalist K-12 preferences often trot out the litany of poverty in the district. We can’t expect kids to avoid Face-timing in class overcome the burdens of poverty until X, Y or Z is done. Well, all states have low-income kids, so how does the academic performance of low-income students in Rhode Island compare to those in other states?

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores strongly reinforce the findings of the Johns Hopkins researchers. For those of you squinting at your iPhone, that is Reading on the left, Math on the right. The percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch who scored “basic or better” is shown on both charts.

These results are nothing less than sickening for Rhode Island, given the gigantic taxpayer investment in the system. Mississippi beats Rhode Island on both tests, and Rhode Island’s poor children score much closer to poor children in Alabama than they do to poor children in neighboring Massachusetts.

Florida is the only state with a majority minority student population to crack the Top 10 in either Reading or Math in 2017. It is unfortunate that a vocal minority in Florida seems desperate to kill the policies leading to that improvement, and hell-bent on adopting a policy mix closer to that of Rhode Island.